The wildest story you will read this week and that’s saying something. I know you’ve probably heard about the Pentagon shooting down a party balloon with an experimental drone laser weapon which caused the FAA to shut down the El Paso airport last week. It’s way crazier than we knew (gift link) and I can’t believe it isn’t a bigger story.
Last spring, in the early months of Steve Feinberg’s tenure as deputy defense secretary, Pentagon staff members briefed him on plans to employ new high-energy laser weapons to take out drones being used by Mexican cartels to smuggle drugs across the southern U.S. border.
But their use was conditioned on getting a green light from aviation safety officials.
[…]
Now the question of whether the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security followed proper procedures and the law in deploying the laser weapon has become a flashpoint within the Trump administration. Working alongside military personnel, agents from Customs and Border Protection, which is part of the Homeland Security Department, used the weapon this week not far from El Paso International Airport, prompting fury inside the F.A.A. and a brief shutdown of the airport and airspace in that region.
Late Tuesday night, the F.A.A. administrator, Bryan Bedford, caught off guard that the system was being used without authorization and concerned for public safety, believed he had little choice but to close the airspace for 10 days, according to more than a half-dozen people. It was an extraordinary decision that surprised the flying public and local officials.
Under pressure from the White House, Mr. Bedford rescinded the order on Wednesday, setting off a bout of finger-pointing within the administration that continued throughout the week. Administration officials told reporters that the F.A.A. did not warn the White House or the Pentagon that it was about to severely limit flights over a city of nearly 700,000 residents.
But internal government communications reviewed by The New York Times tell a very different story. In one email, dated Feb. 6, the F.A.A.’s top lawyer warned a Pentagon official that deploying the laser system without restricting flights created “a grave risk of fatalities or permanent injuries” to Americans traveling through that airspace.
[…]
White House officials declined to comment on Friday, and referred to a social media post from Mr. Duffy, published on Wednesday, that said the administration “acted swiftly to address a cartel drone incursion.”
But that narrative was disputed by multiple people familiar with the situation who said the border protection unit ended up shooting down a party balloon, rather than a drone. Military service members were present during the incident, the people said.
And yes, this was a Hegseth AND a Noem special. Both the Pentagon and CBP were involved. God help us:
Then in the dark morning hours of Feb. 9, members of a C.B.P. tactical unit, who had been trained how to use the counter-drone lasers by the Army, decided to deploy one, while members of the military looked on. They aimed the laser at what they thought was a drone flying near the Army’s Fort Bliss, though it turned out to be a metallic balloon.
It was the first known domestic use of the weapon by federal officials outside of a controlled environment, according to two people with knowledge of the technology, and it was done without the F.A.A.’s approval, in a possible violation of the law
Read the whole thing. You won’t believe it. We have clowns, jokers and Buck Turgidsons in charge of aviation safety and the military and more innocent people are going to be killed before this is all over.
We’re always talking about Trump having “the nuclear codes” as if it’s some kind of remote possibility, or even a joke, that something could happen. But these people really are nuts and I genuinely think anything could happen.